Sweet Clover Market is 3,700 square feet and has approximately 30 employees. If you love the experience of knowing your customers and vendors by their first name, and solving problems quickly in collaboration with your peers (no board meetings or volunteer committees!), this job may be perfect for you. We have a full service old-school meat department which buys meat by the side, a full produce department and a deli providing prepared foods, as well as dairy, frozen, bulk, grocery, gifts, household, vitamins and personal care departments.  We are small but we still buy from UNFI, Black River Produce, Albert’s and KeHe as well as dozens of medium to small sized vendors daily.   We make most everything from scratch here in the store and work hard to bring interesting, nutritious products to the shelf which are natural, organic or local. We are dedicated to keeping the concept of your local neighborhood grocer alive where relationships with customers, vendors and other staff are of paramount importance.  Sweet Clover Market embraces humanistic personnel policies and places a high value on maintaining a supportive work atmosphere while balancing that with the needs of our customers.  When our employees are happy because they are receiving the support they need to do their job well, our customers are happy.  Learn more about us at http://www.sweetclovermarket.com/about.htm 

After 11 years of thriving operations, Sweet Clover Market in Essex, Vermont has decided to create the position of General Manager, allowing the owners to focus on new opportunities.  We are seeking an experienced natural foods retail manager who can bring their experience, skills and passion to our staff and customers in order to maintain and grow upon our success!

The ideal candidate will enjoy the process of finding ideal employment candidates and providing excellent training and continuous mentoring to everyone from department managers to dishwashers in matters of customer service, safety, product information, efficient operations and more. This is easily the most important part of the job and one which you must truly enjoy. Your experience establishing a common language of organizational goals, performance objectives, guidelines and best practices will be your most important tool in this work.

The size of our store dictates that the General Manager learn every job in the store, from meat cutting, to produce buying and beyond, well enough to provide backup coverage or to teach those jobs to new staff as necessary.   The GM occasionally works floor shifts when understaffed and provides on call coverage in emergencies. The GM must be available 24 hours a day to respond to security calls or refrigeration emergencies, though owners can provide part-time backup coverage at this level. 

The GM will be expected to create an annual budget and monitor and manage all controllable expenditures such as labor, supplies and cost of goods.  The GM’s ability to collaborate with the three department managers will be important in this arena.  Extensive experience with bookkeeping, scheduling and budgeting will be necessary for this position.  Experience using Catapult POS software from ECRS would be a great advantage as well and a working knowledge of IT networking is preferred.

The GM will also lead all marketing efforts, which are primarily focused on in-store signage, cross merchandising and sampling.  We are fortunate to have adequate foot traffic in our store.  The GM should expect to spend more time improving operations to be efficient and profitable within existing sales, rather than spending time trying to increase sales. 

QUALIFICATIONS

If you have been working in the natural foods retail arena for several years and are looking for a place to bring your experience and skills to bear on a successful small store where your decisions can have a real and immediate impact, and you can share what you have learned and perhaps learn some more from us, please introduce yourself!  We look forward to meeting you.

Please see full job description at http://www.sweetclovermarket.com/docs/GM narrative job posting.pdf